Everything reminds Milton of the money supply. Well, everything reminds me of sex, but I keep it out of the paper.

So said Robert Solow of Milton Friedman. I'll beg Solow's and your indulgence, Reader, for these days I have wine on my mind, and I can't keep it out of the blog.

A few days ago I read the following passage in The Alchemist, which I've now finished:

Page 60

The old man continued, 'You have been a real blessing to me. Today I understand something I didn't see before: every blessing ignored becomes a curse. I don't want anything else in life. But you are forcing me to look at wealth and at horizons I have never known. Now that I have seen them, and now that I see how immense my possibilities are, I'm going to feel worse than I did before you arrived. Because I know the things I should be able to accomplish, and I don't want to do so. '

A fun coincidence, reading this when I did, as it came just after a disappointing meeting with a restaurant owner. Despite a drawn-out conversation, the owner to the end held the position that while our wines were better than her limited selection and reasonably priced, she thought her customers were content with what she had and couldn't be bothered to care about something better. Perhaps she was right, but to me her position smacked of a certain cognitive dissonance, as if she felt she would be better off by denying a choice existed rather than having to make one. Even still, I doubt this business owner, unlike the one in the book, felt worse afterward.

***

As for my thoughts on the book itself, in short, I didn't like it. Too easy, simple, trite, thoughtless, contradictory. It reminded me of this bit of data showing Americans, particularly better off ones, like to use the metaphor of a journey to describe their lives. Like Tyler Cowen, I wonder if just reveals "our tendency to impose a false or misleading narrative on events."